Fast-moving objects directed at the flock usually belong to one of three categories: bullets, mutant beings with a taste for bird kid, or vehicles hired by an evil megalomaniac wanting to kidnap us and use our powers. Which might explain why I was working on the assumption that the three black dots meant one thing and one thing only: imminent death.
“Max! Relax!” Fang managed to stop me before I could execute my dive. “I think those are the CSM cargo planes.”
It was the Coalition to Stop the Madness (CSM), the activist group my nonwinged mom was involved with, that had asked us to go on this humanitarian relief mission to Chad and to help publicize the work they were doing there. And what with our previous adventures helping them combat global warming and ocean pollution, we were slowly being turned from feral, scavenging outlaws on the lam into Robin Hoody do-gooders. Meanwhile, I was still supposed to save the world at some point. My calendar was full, full, full.
So full that I’d forgotten this was the part of the journey where we were supposed to meet up with the CSM planes so we could be guided into the refugee camp.
I gave Fang a thank-you-for-saving-me-from-myself look. When his eyes met mine, I shivered down to my sneakered toes.
Gazzy called over to me, “I can’t see anything!”
“I can’t see anything either!” Iggy complained.
“I’m rolling my eyes, Ig.” I had to tell him that because he couldn’t see me do it, what with his blindness and all.
“No, there’s, like, dust clouds below,” Gazzy clarified.
I glanced down, and sure enough — the blurry endlessness of sand was even more blurry.
“Not dust devils,” Fang said. His dark feathers were covered with a layer of dust, and grit was caked around his eyes and mouth.
“No.” I peered downward again.
Just then Angel said, “uh-oh,” which is always enough to make my blood run cold. In the next second, I focused sharply on a few dark specks at the front of the dust clouds. One of the dark specks raised a tiny dark toothpick.
This time I knew for sure that I wasn’t overreacting.
“Guns!” I shouted. “They’ve got guns!”
3
“QUICK! UP!” FANG SHOUTED, just as the first bullets strafed the air around me with ominous hisses.
I angled myself upward, only to see the shiny silver underbelly of one of the CSM planes, now flying right above us. It was pressing downward — the rough landing strip was maybe a quarter mile away.
“Drop back!” I yelled. We all went vertical as the planes continued to come down practically on our heads. To escape from the bullets, we’d had to fly up right under them. The engines were way too close — the noise was deafening.
“Watch it!” I yelled, as one plane’s landing gear almost hit Iggy. “Drop down! Drop down!” Bullets are bad, but getting smushed by landing gear, toasted by jet engine exhaust, or sucked into the front of an engine were all much less fixable.
I could now make out the sun-browned faces of the men on … oh, geez, were those camels? The men continued to aim their rifles at us, and I felt a bullet actually whiz by my hair. In about half a second, my brain processed the following thoughts lightning fast:
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1) A bullet hitting the fuel tank on a plane: not a good situation.
2) Slowing down not good: slow + bird kids = drop like rocks.
3) Speeding up not good: fast bird kids + faster planes = getting flattened.
4) The only choice was to go on the offensive.
Fortunately, I’m very comfortable with being offensive — at least on the not-infrequent occasions when someone’s trying to gun down my flock.
“Dive!” I shouted. “Knock ’em down!”
I tucked my wings flat against my back and began to race groundward like a rocket. At this speed, these shooters would need radar and a heat tracer to land a bullet on me. I could actually see the whites of their eyes now, which were widening in surprise.
“Hai-yah!” I screamed — just for fun, really — as I swung my feet down and came to a screeching halt by smashing my heels right into a rider’s back. He flew off the camel, rifle pinwheeling through the air, and felt the joy of being airborne himself for about three seconds before he landed right in front of his pal’s camel.